But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time.
Turning round, while still musing about Society, I ran against B.
(literally). He thought I was a clumsy ass at first, and said so;
but, on recognising me, apologised for his mistake. He had been
there for some time also, waiting for me. I told him that I had
secured two corner seats in a smoking-carriage, and he replied that
he had done so too. By a curious coincidence, we had both fixed
upon the same carriage. I had taken the corner seats near the
platform, and he had booked the two opposite corners. Four other
passengers sat huddled up in the middle. We kept the seats near the
door, and gave the other two away. One should always practise
generosity.
There was a very talkative man in our carriage. I never came across
a man with such a fund of utterly uninteresting anecdotes. He had a
friend with him - at all events, the man was his friend when they
started - and he talked to this friend incessantly, from the moment
the train left Victoria until it arrived at Dover. First of all he
told him a long story about a dog. There was no point in the story
whatever. It was simply a bald narrative of the dog's daily doings.
The dog got up in the morning and barked at the door, and when they
came down and opened the door there he was, and he stopped all day
in the garden; and when his wife (not the dog's wife, the wife of
the man who was telling the story) went out in the afternoon, he was
asleep on the grass, and they brought him into the house, and he
played with the children, and in the evening he slept in the coal-
shed, and next morning there he was again. And so on, for about
forty minutes.
A very dear chum or near relative of the dog's might doubtless have
found the account enthralling; but what possible interest a
stranger - a man who evidently didn't even know the dog - could be
expected to take in the report, it was difficult to conceive.
The friend at first tried to feel excited, and murmured:
"Wonderful!" "Very strange, indeed!" "How curious!" and helped the
tale along by such ejaculations as, "No, did he though?" "And what
did you do then?" or, "Was that on the Monday or the Tuesday, then?"
But as the story progressed, he appeared to take a positive dislike
to the dog, and only yawned each time that it was mentioned.
Indeed, towards the end, I think, though I trust I am mistaken, I
heard him mutter, "Oh, damn the dog!"
After the dog story, we thought we were going to have a little
quiet.
